


Bu1lt Brok3n

by Dragon_Mage



Series: W3 Ar3 Al1v3 [4]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M, Other, Robots, relationships are background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-07
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-10 02:06:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11117649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragon_Mage/pseuds/Dragon_Mage
Summary: Engiebot feels broken. He's known for a while that he is different. He had been putting pieces together long before the others started realizing that they were robots. Problem is that the humans want them to shut down. Engiebot is not too sure that he is okay with being permanently shut down.This story will be deleted from AO3 on [December 1] to become an original work. This piece will be part of an anthology of short stories.





	1. The Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The engiebot has been the only one seeing the reality, but now reality has come to fight him.

Testing Dome in Texas, 1995

How he came out wrong, he did not know. All he knew was that he was there with other bots pretending to be just other humans. There was a whole layer of underlying programming that was supposed to be telling him that he was the Engineer – that he was a human, but it was not working. Why?

Day in and day out, he spent his time pretending. Hungry, they said. His programming would alert him that his system required sustenance in the form of food. Thirsty, they said. His programming would report an excessive amount of heat and friction, which required a resupply of liquid in the water containment.

At night, when the other bots shut down for the night, he locks himself in his work space. With a plug in that allows him to charge in a way that would have otherwise required sleep mode, he works through the night to test his metal body. He tried rewiring things, testing programs, altering bits and pieces, but nothing seemed to work right. Some nights, something would go wrong and his whole system would shut down. Somebody would end up breaking into his workshop to bring the medicbot in and revive him.

Then there was the day that Spy started creeping around. He would have snuck in easily while the others were distracted, if not for the Engineer’s vigilant pet. Bartsy was a dog-like animatronic he built from what he had discovered of his own body. The little bot had simplistic functions though. It mainly barked, being alert to anything that moved or even had a heat signature, whilst alerting its maker with barking at the sighting of anything that might be identified as having organic parts.

Bartsy barked, bringing him a shred of clothing. He turned it over in his hand. Without a doubt, a human was here. Based on the quality of the pants that strip came from, that human was a Spy.

It had been months since any of them had seen a real human. Still, he felt like he was the only one who ever saw, or at least remembered a human. He remembered his maker, a man with a crooked smile and a mischievous glee in his face. He had not spoken with him, and he had yet to learn what facial cues meant, but he had kept the pictures and footage he had of his creator in the save section of his mind. He knew now what the expression meant, but not what the man was thinking of.

Bartsy barked for his attention, pulling him out of thought. He patted the animatronic, falsifying attention, the way any of the other bots would. “Good dog,” he said, keeping up the act.

He felt like he was the only one who knew what being human was. He remembered a human. He remembered that they were flesh and had smiles. All of the bots here just seemed to think they were what was human.

At first, it all seemed flawed. He knew what he was talking about when he said that they were not human. They said that he was being ridiculous and that he was not communicating properly. They all had the same flaw, of believing that they were humans.

As he studied the place they were in, he began to realize the truth. More and more, the bots uncovered things for him, revealing that they saw an expansive blue sky when they looked up at the dome ceiling. They saw desert for miles around when they looked at the walls. This was a test facility, and they as bots were the test subjects who were supposed to be in some form of simulation.

He had long since come to the conclusion that there was something special about these bots, but he could not think of what. They were meant to do something, but they were subpar when it came to shooting down bots that lacked the same capacity of AI. The ones they shot at were true robots, slaves to their masters in every sense of the word.

Perhaps that was the reason. It was the closest hypothesis he had ever come to. They were being tested as machines for their capacity to not only replicate human emotion and behavior, but also to act of their own accord. Perhaps it was to be in such a hazy bliss that made those other bots human. That made them something adorable to him. The Sniper drank beers with the Demoman, who thought he was drunk off of his ass. Strange that alcohol had literally no effect on the body, but after close study, he found that the introduction of alcohol caused the base programming to simulate drunkenness.

He caught sight of a glimmer, a flash of a Spy’s cloak. It could only be a spybot or a Spy, and it was not the spybot he lived with. It had to be the human who came sneaking in.

Sure enough, Bartsy started going off, barking at the glimmer that he had seen. The animatronic started lumbering in the direction of the thing, not yet tethered so as not to go after bots when it was not supposed to.

“Get back here!” he ran after the robot dog, not entirely pleased at the idea of losing his own little invention.

Bartsy yelped, a noise installed to warn that the little bot was being harmed by something. This noise was followed by the buzzing noise of a sapper. He could go and knock the sapper off of his little dog, but that would just lead him a little too close to the Spy.

He turned and ran back to the base, listening as the robot exploded, “Bartsy down!”

He hurried inside to grab a shotgun, arming himself. He would be damned if he was going to let anybody get the drop on him. It was bad enough that a human Spy was lurking around, but the guy was just throwing sappers on things. Granted, Bartsy probably bit the Spy before and the Spy was not going to take another bite.

He took a deep breath, parking himself in his workshop. It was an obvious place to find him, but he did not know any place safer. If a Spy came in, he would be equipped to handle him, having a shotgun ready to shoot.

If the mischief in his maker’s smirk had meant anything, it was probably that he was building a killer…

 

The day turned to night and that passed by without problem. He remained plugged in throughout the night, not wanting to risk shutting down for a Spy. When morning came, he needed to restock his water containment and get some fuel, so he headed to the kitchen, where the others were cooking.

Everything was off, and everyone was panicking. There was something amiss when it came to their behaviors, some of them seeming normal, some of them seeming to panic, and others seeming more concerned about the difference between those panicking and those concerned about the panicking.

“The hell’s going on?” he finally asked.

“I…we’re…you’re…I…” the scoutbot stammered, unsure of what to do or make of things. He was staring at his hands, just confounded by something.

“The only reasonable explanation,” the spybot tried to fake a drag from his cigarette, but there was something different.

After he did that, he looked at the cigarette, as if confused about its existence. It was just a mechanical thing meant to create smoke and give off the idea that he was smoking, but it almost seemed like he was realizing that it was not a real cigarette. That was unlikely though, given how delirious these bots had been programmed.

“What? What is it?” the demobot, calm and slightly delirious from alcohol consumption, flickered his light as if blinking at the spybot.

“That spybot,” the spybot went on.

“Spybot?” the engiebot had heard nothing about another spybot around.

“There was a spybot lurking around,” the spybot explained, “He came into my room…he stabbed me with a needle. We’ve been infected with something.”

Of course, deduction led him to believe that this _spybot_ was none other than the human Spy he had seen the day before. Nevertheless, he could not help but wonder what was really going on. It could not have been a needle that the man put into them. If he did not just put a sapper on the bots’ chests, then what was he really up to?

“Really?” he got a little closer, curious about what it was they were feeling, “What exactly is it doing to you?”

“Perhaps it’s a narcotic?” the medicbot offered with concern.

The Spy waved off the suggestion, “I doubt this would be caused by a narcotic. It has to be something specific.”

“H-how come?” the scoutbot asked, looking up from his hands.

“We’re having the same delusion,” the spybot glared at the scoutbot. Those two never did seem to get along well.

“Heavy not feel well,” the heavybot came clunking into the kitchen.

“Are you seeing robots?” the spybot asked.

So that was it. It hit the engiebot like a brick to the face. Whatever the Spy had done had removed their programming. This probably meant that he was not up to much good. Their reason for existing was to pretend to be real people, so removing that would cause some problems. In fact, given that the others were under the impression that they were human, he was not sure this realization would work well with their programming.

He suddenly stood up with alarm. It was starting to make him feel panicked. If their base programming started acknowledging the removal of their overlying programming for reality, then it might just shut them down.

“No,” the heavybot replied, “Heavy has a stomach ache.”

“It’s all of those sandwiches you ate!” the medicbot replied, throwing his hands up.

The engiebot kept his attention on the scoutbot and the spybot. They were the ones that had been attacked so far. The Spy had breached their defenses, and somehow managed to get to even the spybot. Perhaps he was starting with the difficult mercenaries and working his way down.

“What are we going to do?” the demobot asked.

“We are going to destroy that little robot! The traitor doesn’t know what he’s walked in on!” the soldierbot slammed a fist into the opposite hand, “We are going to ground him into little bolts and bits! And then we’ll take those bits and burn them! Pyro! We got a spybot to burn!”

The pyrobot, programmed with only muffled gibberish to say, made his usual noises. He seemed quite excited at the prospect of burning a spybot though. He would probably have fun with that. The engiebot simply hoped they were careful. While the Spy might not have worse intentions than whatever he was already doing, he was still armed and dangerous.

The engiebot grabbed a bottle of water and a leg of chicken before heading back to his workshop. The moment he stepped in, he noticed that something was amiss. He was a bit afraid, not wanting to immediately be the next one. No, he had work to do to protect his teammates.

He grabbed the nearest item, a rusty old wrench, and held it at the ready. He moved with his back to the wall, hoping the Spy had already left. That was just best case scenario. He would give for the Spy to walk out of that room invisible at this moment, but found that unlikely. Maybe he would just stay where he was not even touching the engiebot.

There was silence as he inched his way around the workshop. He hurriedly reached for his shotgun, only for it to be grabbed away. The Spy’s mistake was letting the invis down, but the engiebot’s mistake was being immediately taken aback by this sudden appearance.

“Hold very still and nobody gets hurt,” the Spy held the barrel to his face.

The engiebot held his hands up. That was all he could do. This was it. The Spy had already won.

The Spy pulled out a screwdriver, carefully reaching forward to the engiebot’s head. He felt it against his metal, and felt it twist something. Something came loose and fell on the floor. The Spy quickly ducked to snatch up the screw. He immediately started stumbling towards the door, making his way out of the workshop. He had a cocky grin on his face.

“Au revoire, laborer!” he spat before he disappeared, leaving the shotgun to clatter to the ground.

He picked up the shotgun, feeling it in his hands. He did not feel any different. Nothing seemed off. In fact, everything seemed fine. Then again, he was already broken, so perhaps he was just already doomed this way.

He settled into his workshop, taking up the shotgun. He would beware of the Spy if he tried to visit him again. However, curiosity did grow on him and he picked up a hand mirror to study his head.

 

It had been ten hours before the engiebot left his workshop. He had come to the conclusion that he could just fix what the Spy had done with a screw of the same size. Only problem was finding a screw of that size. It had taken him hours of trying to measure the hole to figure out just the right size of screw for his head.

With a brand new screw in his head, he headed into the kitchen for food. He felt rather chipper after replacing the screw. He was curious about what it does, but after everything that was going on, decided that it was best not to try and fiddle with anything.

A scream caught his ear as he stepped into the kitchen. The heavybot and the medicbot were in there, sharing sandwiches, when they shared a look. It was like they knew what it was and what was going on.

The engiebot did not know, and he did not like not knowing. Of course, it could have very well been the Spy getting to somebody else. However, knowing what he knew now, there was an easy fix for that. He grinned to himself, thinking on the stash of screws he had laying in a box in his workshop. They were the perfect size if their heads were all the same.

“Sounded like Sniper,” the heavybot noted.

“Ja,” the medicbot replied.

“You boys seen that Spy around?” the engiebot asked, following them in the direction of the scream.

“Nein,” the medicbot replied.

“We are busy worrying, Engineer!” the heavybot growled loudly, “Please work with us! We are trying to keep together!”

“Scout! Scout wake up!” the sniperbot’s voice was raised high.

They all picked up a clip trot as they headed into the recreation room. Demobot was standing nearby, staring dazed at sniperbot’s back. The spybot was sitting on the couch, looking like he had a severe migraine. The sniperbot was kneeling over the unconscious scoutbot, whose head was sparking.

The engiebot grimaced, “He don’t look too good. Doc you think you wanna.”

The sniperbot let out a weeping noise, “He’s dead! He’s dead you idiots!”

Engiebot watched as the others took off their hats in solemn silence for the scoutbot’s apparent death. This could not be quite the same as a death though, given the scoutbot’s head was still whirring with noise and his head was sparking.

“Let me see,” the medicbot put his hat back on his head and got closer. He put a hand where an artery would be on the neck. “He is still alive!” the medicbot announced loudly, “But…very close…to death. Bring him to the infirmary! I want to check his vitals.”

The medicbot moved out of the way as the heavybot stepped in to pick up the scoutbot. He hefted him over his shoulder, much to the sniperbot’s frustration.

“Be careful!” the sniperbot spat angrily.

For the moment, the engiebot’s attention shifted from the sparking bot to the one who was crying. It was genuinely interesting to see emotion. They all knew emotion, recognized it and such, but it was rare to actually see it from one of them. Emotion was buried somewhere deep in their programming, the programming he had to go digging through in his own head to recognize. This was the first time he had ever seen one of the mercenaries he worked with on the verge of crying.

“Everything’ll be alright, son,” he patted the sniperbot’s shoulder, hoping to comfort him.

“What is going on in here?! Where’s that Spy?!” the soldierbot came charging in angrily. He seemed like a mad bull about to blow his head clean off his shoulders. That was an emotion they displayed frequently, because it was easy to empathize with and did not take a lot of grounding. At least, the engiebot did not think it did.

“The spybot got Scout!” the sniperbot was trying to hold it together.

“ _Please_ stop sniveling,” the spybot begged, “You look ridiculous.”

The sniperbot turned on the spybot angrily, “Oh _I_ look ridiculous?! How do I know you didn’t do nothing to him? You were in here with him! You two were alone!”

“What would I do to Scout?” the spybot glared up at the sniperbot, fingers still pressed to his head as if he had a migraine.

“A lot of things,” the sniperbot growled.

“Okay then, _why_ would I do something to Scout,” the spybot protested.

“You have a lot of reasons to hate just about everyone in this goddamn facility!” the sniperbot raised his voice.

“Easy now, fellas,” the engiebot tried to calm them down, “No need to fight. No need to argue. We have bigger problems on our hands.”

“Pipe down, Engie!” the sniperbot turned to him angrily, before reeling back to face the spybot again, “You’re a cowardly git! You know that? Everybody hates you! You are literally the worst!”

“France is not known for bravery like America!” the soldierbot announced proudly.

“Alright then, Soldier,” the engiebot hesitated, trying to decide how to deescalate this, “We have a Spy- spybot on the loose. It’s a bigger problem than we ca-”

The spybot suddenly raised a hand and pointed at the engiebot’s head, “Something happened.”

“What?” the sniperbot turned to get a better look at the engiebot.

The soldierbot’s head tilted a little. He tried to squint, seeing if he could tell what they were talking about. Of course, he was outright confused of what they were talking about.

“I’m sorry. What?” the engiebot turned to the spybot, hoping to nip the accusation in the bud.

“On the left side of your head,” the spybot peered at him, curiously. He seemed intent and concerned all at the same time. “There’s something different there.”

“Maybe he got a haircut,” the soldierbot offered.

“No,” the spybot shook his head.

“Did you do something, Engie?” the sniperbot peered at him. Being the closest one, engiebot tried to lean away from the sniperbot the most.

“No, it looks…you were attacked by the spybot, weren’t you? You’ve been attacked,” the spybot was saying it as a fact, no longer questioning his own theory.

“No!” the soldierbot protested, “Don’t be silly! Engineer would tell his teammates if he was attacked!”

“I uh…was met by the Spy,” the engiebot admitted. All eyes turned to him so suddenly that he wanted to sink inward. “He didn’t do anything to me though,” he argued, “This was my doing.” He pointed to the side of his head.

There were a few moments of silence, before the spybot spoke, “I don’t believe it.”

There was a bit more silence, as the spybot got to his feet. The sniperbot did not seem to be too sure whether he believed the engiebot or the spybot. He was not fully over being angry at the spybot though. Maybe he would swing the engiebot’s way. Soldierbot was scratching his head, trying to decide on what his next move should be.

“If something happened to me, I would tell you,” the engiebot said calmly, “I happened to be armed at the time. I happened to scare him off.”

“This man is not the kind of man you can simply scare off!” the spybot protested angrily.

The engiebot took a moment to think. The spybot was seeing them all as robots now. He was seeing the reality. Maybe he could use that to his advantage somehow.

“Listen, you’re tired and worn out,” the engiebot said.

“No, I’m fine,” the spybot seemed like he was gritting his teeth.

“You were definitely attacked by the spybot before,” he said, trying to keep to the story that he was not seeing robots but people around him, “Reality ain’t the same for you no more. It hasn’t changed a bit for me. So, if you’re insinuating that there’s somehow something wrong with me, when you’re the one with the apparent headache, then we’re going to have some trouble.”

“Engineer is a spybot!” the soldierbot suddenly shouted, pointing at the engiebot.

“No! No I’m not!” the engiebot put his hands up in protest.

“How do we tell if he’s not?” the sniperbot looked from one man to the other.

There was silence as the engiebot let his forehead fall against his palm. Of course, none of them were used to Spy checking. They did not deal with nearly as many spybots as they did sniperbots or scoutbots in the past. Those empty bots with commands rather than artificial intelligence.

“Sit down, Spy,” the engiebot gestured to the spybot, “And Solly, don’t throw accusations around. We have important things to-”

Another scream caught all of their attentions. They all jumped. They looked around, but there was no sign of where the scream had come from or who it had been.

“The spybot!” the sniperbot exclaimed, pulling out his machete.

The spybot pulled out his revolver, “Time for the killing.”

“Let’s go!” the soldierbot charged off from the recreation room.

Engiebot followed as a familiar scream came from the infirmary. The medicbot screamed, then cried out to the heavybot. The heavybot was roaring about something. Something was going down and they were missing it.

The soldierbot barreled through the double doors to the infirmary. He was screaming at the top of his lungs as he charged in, bringing the heavybot’s attention to him. The heavybot had gone mad, with one hand pinning the medicbot’s head down and the other raised in a fist to pound his head in.

“Heavy! Please! Somebody help me! He’s gone berserk!” the medicbot’s words finalized the moments before the fist came down, slamming with all of the power of a machine to crush the medicbot’s head. Engiebot was astonished, watching as pieces of metal became shrapnel, the head collapsing and everything above the neck turning into a pile of rubble. Even the eyes shut down.

“Medic!” the soldierbot shouted.

“What have you done?!” the spybot exclaimed loudly.

“Hold still and this won’t take long!” the sniperbot switched his machete out for his bow and arrow.

Engiebot was shocked, but as he looked on, he noticed something amiss. He touched the side of his head as he looked at the tiny hole on the side of the heavybot’s head. There should have been a screw there. He had been attacked by the Spy, and it was affecting his grasp on the reality he knew.

“Little robots do not scare Heavy!” the heavybot roared angrily.

That did it for the engiebot. That assured him of what he needed to know. He knew what he had to do, but he needed his tools to do it. He turned and ran from the infirmary, making a beeline for his workshop.

He quickly dug through his tools, grabbing a wrench just in case, then rushed back to the infirmary with a jingling pocket of screws. He was panting for air, trying to cool his systems. He ran as hard as he could, feeling the ground beat beneath his feet. Every movement almost hurt, but it was that kind of hurt where panic made it okay.

He arrived in time to see the soldierbot and heavybot wrestling. The sniperbot was injured and reeling from it. The demobot was trying to knock the heavybot out, ramming a bottle into his hard cranium.

“You are weak!” the soldierbot roared, “You will stop here!”

“I’ve got him!” the demobot yelled.

“Stop!” the engiebot exclaimed. The moment he got close to everything though, something hit him in the head. An accident sure, but it sent him reeling to the floor and his senses were gone from him.


	2. The Unreality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The engiebot sees the world through a new perspective, but it comes at a cost.

The engiebot woke to find that he was lying on an infirmary bed. He groaned in pain. Everything was aching and felt bad. He did not want to sit up, but he forced himself to.

“What happened?” he spoke aloud. That sounded different, it was not his voice at all.

His eyes opened to see a Demoman, a Sniper and a Spy. The infirmary was splattered with blood and the three men were discussing what to do. Nearby he could see the carnage of what was a Medic.

He shook himself, confounded by what had just happened. Was this a dream? Was this someplace new?

He looked at his hands. They felt different, but a good kind of different. He could see skin stretched over bone, with meat in between. The skin flexed and wrinkled as he moved them. He stared at them for a while, perplexed.

This must be how the others lived. What it meant was far beyond him. Sure, he knew they thought they were human, but he never realized that this was their reality. This was what they thought living was like. And if this was living, then living was great.

He smiled to himself, feeling quite invigorated. There was a strange warmth throughout his body. It must have been his heat regulator acting up. He could use some water.

For once, as he looked to the others, he was going to use the word thirsty and mean it. As he felt his parched dry neck – hell he might as well call it a throat – he realized what it meant. The happiness bubbling up in him welled so far that this one word was going to be so important to tell them.

“It looks like our Engineer has indeed been attacked by the spybot,” the Spy said, looking the engiebot up and down.

He frowned, looking down at his hands. There was nothing wrong with him, was there? Surely there was not some actual skin being pulled taut over his metal parts. No that would be silly. Besides, none of the usual sensations were there. His process were not directing towards his perception. He was perceiving the world through a filter, not as it actually was. There was nothing wrong with him, he just had to figure out what made this happen.

“You seeing bots now too, Engie?” the Sniper peered at him.

The engiebot chuckled to himself. How funny it was that the question was asked _after_ his perception changed. What a coincidence.

“Actually, I’m feeling better,” he smiled, “I was feeling strange this morning.”

“And you were attacked by the spybot!” the Spy exclaimed.

“Well,” the engiebot hesitated, flexing his hands, “It’s more of like…I think I stayed up too late. I wasn’t sleeping enough. That’s all I needed.” He offered the Spy a smile, hoping to rid him of his worries.

“Glad you’re feeling better, Engie,” the Sniper smiled.

The double doors opened and a Soldier came limping in. He had an injured foot turned almost all of the way around, but he was toughing it out. Nothing the Engineer had not seen him do before as a bot, but it was strange to see him do it with this human appearance.

“What are you ladies doing in here?!” the Soldier roared, “We have a traitor to catch! The Heavy is going rampant! Pyro lost him around the corner!”

“What corner?” the Sniper asked.

“I dunno,” the Soldier responded, “He said corner.”

The Engineer hopped off of the bed with a sigh, “He probably didn’t say corner. Let’s go find him.”

He hurried off through the double doors looking back and forth for signs of life. He had to stop the rampant destruction that the Heavy was going to put the team through. Only he knew how to fix him. At least, he had an idea of how he had to fix this.

“Engineer! Wait up!” the Soldier charged after him, hefting a big bazooka onto his shoulder, “I’m coming with you!”

“Thanks, partner,” he smiled at the Soldier, glad to have a teammate at his back.

 

They searched the base, but found no signs of the Heavy. They even met up with Pyro, who honestly seemed like a man in a suit. It was strange to think that all of these people were robots. He saw them with a fresh outlook, each of them somehow new to his eyes.

When they could not find the Heavy, the Engineer headed back to his workshop. He was on his way there, when he overheard the Sniper talking to the Demoman about the Scout’s condition. It was bad.

The Engineer diverted his path, heading down to the infirmary instead. When he arrived, he found the unconscious body lying on a bed. He looked like he was sleeping peacefully, with little twitches here and there.

“It’s alright, son,” he patted the young man’s shoulder, “It’ll be over soon.”

“What’ll be over soon?” the Spy came in through the double doors with the Sniper at his heel.

He raised his eyebrows as he turned to the other two, “I mean, if he can hear me, I want him to know that we’re here for him.” He was not yet sure how to explain to them that he knew how to fix this. It would likely cause a bunch of problems with them. Their reality was not the same as his, after all.

“What was that about something being over?” the Spy pressed.

“All of this,” he gestured in a general manner, “Nonsense. It’s gonna be over soon.”

“Heavy went pretty crazy, didn’t he?” the Sniper had tears in his eyes as he walked over to Scout. He took the younger man’s hand in his own.

The Engineer looked on in astonishment at the gesture of affection. Sniper deeply cared about Scout. Whether Spy knew about this before, Engineer did not know, but he certainly had not known. It was like seeing a fish fly.

“The only way any of this is going to stop is if we get a miracle,” the Spy argued, “Heavy is on the loose rampaging. The spybot escaped. Scout is…having some…sort of meltdown.”

The Engineer was taken aback for a moment. He had to remember that the Spy was seeing things as they actually were. Whatever Scout was going through looked like a meltdown. To those whose perception was still filtered, Scout looked like he was just unconscious.

He glanced over at a mirror. He felt so stunned upon seeing his reflection. He was not a robot at all. He was not even an ordinary man by his own standards. The face that gaped back at him with goggles over his eyes was none other than his maker’s.

“We got no doc,” the Sniper said, sniffling, “How are we going to take care of him?”

“I don’t know,” the Spy sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked like he was in so much pain and under so much stress.

“We’ll figure this out,” he looked over at the body of the late Medic. A sheet had been thrown over the gore from his head, but it had soaked through with blood.

“May I suggest that we do _something_?” the Spy pressed, looking rather frustrated.

The Engineer wondered if there was anything left of the Medic’s brain to salvage. Given he was a bot, if the memories and processing capacity was still there, then maybe all he needed was to rebuild certain parts and put it into a new head. That or perhaps take one of those medicbots they killed and revamp it into an AI. That part might prove problematic though.

“If we stand around here, nothing is going to get done!” the Spy pressed.

“You’re right,” the Engineer nodded, “But we can’t risk Scout…” There was still the Spy lurking around, after all. There was no telling what he would do if he got a hold of Scout while he was unconscious, or the Medic’s body. They needed to keep both safe, dead or not. “Sniper, I’ll stay here and guard Scout. Any Spy getting in could be a danger.”

“Nobody’s going to do anything about that body?” the Sniper gestured to the Medic’s corpse.

The Engineer spared it a glance, “We will deal with that later.”

“And what do you expect us to do while you’re lazing about?” the Spy asked, snidely.

“I expect you two to scope out where the Heavy went, or better yet where that Spy went,” the Engineer explained, “If you get a hold of that sneak, then we can get information out of him.”

“You mean the spybot?” the Spy corrected, glaring at him.

Engineer clenched his teeth for a moment. It was becoming more and more frustrating to deal with the Spy. He just had subtle accusation after subtle accusation to lay on him. He was not taking it, but he was not going to hurt his teammate for having a terrible time. He was dealing with reality, after all.

“Yes, that’s what I meant,” he nodded in agreement, “I’ll stay here and keep him and Heavy out. When you find him, get him to my workshop.”

“That should be one of the last places that thing should be,” the Spy snarled.

“Why would we bring him there?” the Sniper asked.

“Because, I want to open him up,” the Engineer said firmly, bluffing his way through this, “I’m going to open up his head and see just what information he’s got.”

The Sniper nodded in approval. The Spy hesitated, but after glancing at the Sniper’s nod, he gave a tight lipped nod as well. The two of them filed out of the infirmary, leaving the Engineer alone with the Scout.

He took a relieved breath. Now he could try and help Scout. He had the materials he needed. All he had to do was put the screw in the Scout’s head and things should to back to normal for him.

He turned Scout’s head, frowning when he realized that as a human he was not the same. He even felt around with his thumb but found no indication that there were screws or metal anywhere. It was all smooth young skin. He looked and felt human, through and through.

That was fine. The side of the Scout’s head was just sheen metal, all he had to do was fiddle around until the screw found its place. He would just have to wing it. It would look bad if he was trying to put a screw in his head, when the others got here.

He reached into his pocket, but what had been a box of screws were small needles. He stared at them in disbelief. They rolled around in his hand, freely moving the way needles would move. Why were they not even freer? Why were they not screws?

He reached for his screwdriver and pulled out a syringe. When did he have a syringe? That was supposed to be a screwdriver!

Panic overwhelmed him. The syringe dropped from his hand as he stepped back. His chest hurt and his breath came quickly. He felt like the world was collapsing around him.

He was not sure what was happening. He did not get the usual messages from his system that he usually would. Everything was different. He could not tell if it was a food thing, a water thing or something else entirely. It had to be something he could fix.

He heard a scream from one of the halls in the base. It had to be the Spy causing trouble. He forced himself to his feet, dropping the needles behind himself. He rushed out to try and find the source of the screams.

He was surprised that the Heavy had gotten back into the base. He was fighting with the Demoman, Soldier and the Sniper. He looked on, infuriated with the situation. Screws did not look like screws. Screwdrivers did not look like screwdrivers. How could he help Heavy if he could not help Scout?

He was so distracted that he did not notice when the Heavy got too close. He shook himself free of his own thoughts and bolted. He did not get far, as a hand grabbed a hold of him. He cried out, but was too late. One hand had a hold of his arm and wrenched him around.

He had no weapons, only his wrench. That was all he could do. He grabbed it and swung, trying to hit the Heavy and knock his hand away. It did nothing to him. The Heavy could take many blows without flinching, what could a little Engineer do against him?

“Little robots will feel wrath!” the Heavy grabbed him by the head and lifted him off of the ground.

Panic. Panic was the feeling. He understood what it was now. It hit him hard and all he could do was scream and kick. His boots felt nothing as they were removed from the ground. His neck was strained as one hand lifted him by his head. Everything felt wrong and painful. All he could do was panic and flail as wildly as he could manage to.

“Put him down!” the Soldier roared, leaping in to smack the backside of the Heavy’s head with a shovel.

The Heavy dropped the Engineer, ditching him to attack the Soldier. The Engineer needed a minute to regain his thoughts. He had just come so close to being as dead as the Medic. That thought just hit him like a brick to the face and made him feel stunned.

Suddenly the Spy appeared, his cloak dropping, “Get up! Move!” He grabbed the Engineer’s arm, forcing him to his feet and forcing him to run.

The Engineer felt helpless and useless. He was of no help to anybody. Right now, his only useful skill to fix the situation was gone with his ability to see reality.

“Engineer! Get the hell out of the way!” the Spy gave him a shake.

“I…” he looked over his shoulder, back the way they came, “I could have…I could have fixed him. Now I can’t. I’ve fucked up.”

“Listen to me! Listen to me!” the Spy sounded so desperate.

The Engineer looked to him, feeling withdrawn and helpless. Their situation was hopeless. There was nothing he could do for the Heavy. There was nothing he could do for Scout. They did not even have a Medic around anymore. They were all just doomed.

“Go build your sentries,” the Spy insisted, “Like that…robot…dog thing. Go build something!”

“I…I can’t,” he refused. He would not bring himself so low that he would kill a teammate for being confused.

“You have to!” the Spy shook him again.

“We…we lost,” the Engineer held back the tears. He had never felt such things before, as they bit at his eyes and then welled up. His throat became sore with a lump.

“Engineer!” the Spy shook him again, “I need you to work with me!”

“I can’t do nothing,” the Engineer argued, “I’m useless. I’ve done nothing to help the situation. I can’t even…I can’t even fix them.”

“You built Bartsy!” the Spy barked.

The Engineer hesitated, furrowing his brow, “Bartsy?” He remembered the little roobt dog, but he was not sure why the Spy would bring it up.

“If you can build something that protects you from a Spy…then you can build something that can protect you from the Heavy!” the Spy pleaded, “Just please! Please!”

There was such strange desperate that built up in tears in the Spy’s eyes. He felt warmed by this sentiment. Maybe the Spy had decided to stop giving him a hard time and to start caring.

“I…” the Spy’s eyes darted between his own eyes, searchingly.

“Help!” the Demoman called out.

The Spy flinched, glancing towards the fighting, “I have to go.”

“I’ll…think of something,” the Engineer grumbled, turning his eyes towards the ground.

“Think fast!” the Spy grabbed his chin, pulling up his face. He did not have a moment to think before he was pulled into a kiss.

Warm and soft. That was how he would have described it. There was a bit of wet and a bit of passionate in there, however the majority of it was just warm and soft. It was good.

When the Spy pulled away, their eyes met for a few moments. The Spy was searching for a reaction. Maybe he was searching for the chance of whether it meant anything to the Engineer or not.

When the gaze broke, the Spy was running away. He disappeared as he used his invis watch. He was heading off to attack at teammate, who was just as scared and confused as Scout had been. In fact, Spy should have been that scared and confused. Maybe he was and that was his problem all along. Maybe he had just been dealing with seeing robots all day and he was just trying to get past that realization.

Not the Engineer though. He had experienced their reality for the first time ever. By experiencing his reality, the reality that he knew to be true, they were all going berserk, crazy, catatonic, or just slowly losing themselves. If he restored his own reality, he could fix theirs. When he touched his head though, all that he could feel was skin and hair, no metal or screws.

“Dammit,” he muttered under his breath, “I need to find that damn Spy.”

He turned and ran through the halls, searching for any signs of a Spy. He had to be here somewhere. He must be hiding somewhere, waiting for an unsuspecting robot to pass him by.

 

He was searching for over an hour before he found the man. When he found him though, he was not alone. He was out near where he had destroyed the bot named Bartsy. Looking like a spybot, the man was accompanied by what appeared to be a medicbot and a sniperbot.

“G’day!” the sniperbot aimed at him.

He threw his hands up, “Mercy!”

The outcry was met with confusion. The bot looking men shared looks. They stared at the Engineer with suspicion.

“You! Spy!” he pointed to the Spy, beckoning to him.

“What are you doing out here?” the Spy asked, cautiously. He sounded like a spybot.

“What you did before,” he pointed to his head, showing him the side where the screw should be, “Do it again!”

More confusion was shared amidst the three mercenaries. The Spy did not protest though. Instead, he pulled out what appeared to be a syringe and stuck it into the side of the Engineer’s head. A bit of jerking and jolting occurred before it finally came loose.

Everything came loose and the filter faded off. He blinked, trying to restore his understanding of the world. His processors started sending him messages. He started trying to assess what was going on as well.

He touched the side of his head, feeling that it was no longer skin and hair but metal. He took the screw though, not letting the Spy catch it.

When the three mercenaries looked like men again, he breathed a sigh of relief, “Thank you.”

Before they could respond, he grabbed the tool from the Spy and ran back towards the base. They shouted and ran after him. In their confusion, they forgot not to follow him into this pit of hell that was full of destruction. Almost immediately the three of them got hit by a couch that was thrown as a weapon.

The fight had severely escalated. The heavybot was trying to stay alive, while the others were trying to take him down. All the while, none of them seemed to realize that three humans had entered the vicinity.

The engiebot waited for the heavybot to become preoccupied with the soldierbot and demobot before approaching. He was fast as he could be on his short legs. He rushed over and leaped onto his back. He had his arms looped around him until he got his legs around the heavybot’s chest.

The heavybot roared in anger. He grabbed his arm, trying to rip him off. He struggled with him, trying to break free. His free hand held the screw driver, but the arm the heavybot had a hold of had the screw.

“Engie!” the soldierbot called out.

“Get his-” the engiebot had no time to explain, as the bazooka hit the heavybot square in the chest. With a loud grunt, the damage did enough to knock him down, causing him to fall on the engiebot.

Almost immediately the heavybot started struggling. Having both arms free though, the engiebot brought the screw and driver together, then stuck the screw in its place, tightening it down. The bot was still struggling even after he got the screw in. Given he had replaced his own screw before and needed a reboot to fix everything, he figured the heavybot would need the same. He grabbed his wrench and gave him a solid whack to the head.

To his relief, it did the trick, but everything was not over. Nothing was over. He crawled away from the heavybot to face his teammates and the three mercenaries who had been exposed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I knew how this story was going to end, but chapter 3 is taking me a while. I can't decide how I want it to end. It will happen...but the next chapter is very long. I might have written myself into a corner that I need to back out of before I can finish it.


	3. Fighting Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The humans come for them, but the bots will fight back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The planned ending for this has changed, so it has extended. I am adding another chapter for the ending. I hope you enjoy this one.

The engiebot looked between his teammates and the three mercenaries, each group separated by a space between them. The three were outnumbered, so they were quick to turn tail. Being the dog-like beasts that they were, his teammates made haste to chase them down.

The only man that stayed behind was the spybot. The spybot seemed rather morose in his behavior though. If anything, the engiebot would have said he was frowning. Everything about him just seemed frustrated and upset, like something terrible had just happened to him and he was never going to forgive anybody for their perceived misgivings.

“What’s got you low, partner?” he asked.

“The fact that you’ve yet to even acknowledge that I kissed you,” the spybot replied, “Or at least…tried to.”

“Don’t really…have time for that,” the engiebot explained.

For some reason, this brought his mind back to how passionate the sniperbot had been about the scoutbot. He could not just call it affection now. After that experience, he realized that it had to be more. They thought they were human, they thought they were normal. It was not a stretch to think that the two had formed something between them.

“Scout!” he gasped, hurrying off towards the infirmary.

When he arrived, the scoutbot was still sparking and whirring. It was quieter though. It seemed like the scoutbot was running out of power.

It had to be that the scoutbot’s processor was overheating while trying to fix all that taking the filter away had done. He was not technically sleeping in any sense.

He glanced at the ground, looking at the shrapnel. The medicbot’s body was still there, but there was no blood. That made him feel quite relieved.

He bent to pick up one of the screws he had left behind before. Strange how different they had seemed while he had his filter working.

“What are you going to do?” the spybot asked.

“I’m going to fix the Scout,” the engiebot explained, as he approached the scoutbot, “Do me a favor and put Medic on one of those beds. I’ll…see if I can fix him after. Let’s start with the immediate fixes.”

The Spy did as he asked, watching as he gently fitted the screw to the hole. “So this is real?” the Spy hesitated, “All of this…the…robotics…we’re robots…it’s real?”

The engiebot hesitated, but then nodded, “It’s real. It’s the reality we’ve had all along.”

“Then why does it hurt?” the spybot winced.

The engiebot did not look at him, refusing to make eye contact of any form, “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because you’ve always been this way? Your processor doesn’t know how to handle this.” He glanced at the spybot, but he seemed unimpressed with that answer.

“So…Heavy and Scout?” the spybot pressed.

“They’ll wake up feeling like it was just a nightmare,” he explained.

“What about Medic?” the spybot gestured to the bed he laid the Medic on.

“I’ll do my best,” he sighed, “I have no idea what I can do for sure. All I know is that I can try. I just don’t know what can be salvaged yet.”

He finished putting the screw into place. It was tight and would not leave the spot. That was, unless the Spy tried something again. The only way to combat that would be to cover the screws on his head somehow.

“I was right all along?” the spybot questioned.

“Not exactly,” the engiebot shook his head.

“So they’ll wake up and everything will seem normal to them?” the spybot asked.

“Just about,” the engiebot hesitated, “The reboot will do the trick.”

“What about you?” the spybot asked.

Engiebot bent to pick up another screw. This one would be for the spybot. He would approach him gently though. He would be sure to be kinder to the spybot.

“What about me?” he asked.

“Will you see things normal again?” the spybot asked.

He paused for thought, “I was never normal. I was built broken. My filter never worked. All of you…all of you saw the world as if you were humans. I was the odd one out. Always.”

“Always?” the spybot gave him a sad look.

“Always,” the engiebot nodded, looking at the screw in his hand, “I got…I have a screw for you…” He showed it to the spybot. “Hold still and I’ll fix your filter.”

The spybot hesitated, trying to decide what to do. He almost seemed like he was going to deny the screw. Maybe he would try to be brave with the engiebot.

The engiebot held up a hand, “No arguing, boy. This isn’t a matter of you choosing. Your processor has come to understand you as…a human…a Spy…a person…with flesh…with feelings.”

“Do you have feelings?” the spybot suddenly looked taken aback.

“Yes but…but the point is!” the engiebot tried to bring the conversation back to the important point, “These feelings of aching and soreness are your registry’s response to your core processor overloading and overheating. You can’t process being a robot, being without the filter. You _need_ that filter. Otherwise…”

He looked down at the scoutbot. He was finally resting, with no more whirring or sparking. All of the scoutbot’s systems had settled down and he was in sleep mode. He would wake up and be fine.

“You’ll end up like the Scout did,” he explained further, “You’ll go catatonic. Your processor will overheat. And the only thing to stop that is to fix your filter.”

“Then come with me,” the spybot pleaded, “Fix your own filter as well.”

“And if something happens again, then who will have us?” he gave the spybot a sad look, “No, it’s better this way. Besides, I was built broken.”

“But what about when _your_ processor overheats?” the spybot exclaimed.

“I just told you. I was built this way,” he explained, “I guess my screw was loose this entire time. All this time and I never noticed. I guess that’s just chance. Either way, I’ll be fine. Things will be fine.”

The spybot sighed and turned his head to look away, “Just get it over with.”

He carefully slipped the screw into the hole at the side of the spybot’s head. He started screwing it with his fingers, before putting the screwdriver to his head. He screwed it tightly, so that it was unlikely to come loose ever again.

When he finished, the Spy sort of blinked at him, his lights flashing, “Nothing seems different. It didn’t work.”

The engiebot shook his head, “Go take a nap. A reboot will reset your system.”

The spybot did not have much reaction to this. He sort of just stood there for a while. Then he looked down at his feet. He seemed to have something more on his mind than all of this.

“Just use one of the beds over there,” he gestured to a bed by where the scoutbot was.

“What…what about you?” the spybot asked, hesitantly.

“What about me, boy? You’re stalling. Go lay down,” he gestured a bit more aggressively this time.

“No,” the spybot’s head snapped up to look at him, “I mean…this…you…me…us…” He stammered uncertainly.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he felt his core heat up in response.

“You…you don’t feel anything though? Like…you do not have the same emotions?” the spybot asked, “The stretch of emotions that would make you more…human?”

“I’m not human, Spy,” he said, waiting for the spybot to move, “I can only pretend.”

“I…but…pretending…” the spybot gave a sigh.

The engiebot paused for thought, trying to figure out why this bothered the spybot so much, “What do you _want_ me to feel?”

The spybot was hushed and slow as he moved towards one of the beds. He hopped up onto it, perching on the edge. He leaned over his knees, staring at the ground. It made the engiebot wonder what he was thinking about.

“Do you feel love?” the spybot finally asked.

What a contrite and cliché question to ask. Still, the engiebot figured he knew what love was. Not that he had felt it before, but he understood the concept. Maybe the spybot had a different concept of love though. After all, the spybot had lived for near a year as a human in his mind, it was more likely that in his own way he had simulated real love better than the engiebot could ever understand.

“I suppose…maybe,” the engiebot shrugged.

“Maybe?” the spybot looked at him, both irritated at the response and thoroughly flabbergasted by it.

“I guess…describe it?” he suggested.

He took a deep breath, tilting his head up, “When you look at a person and your heart begins to flutter. Whenever they’re around, you want them around more. You miss them when they’re not there. They are on your mind almost constantly. You worry about what they think of you, above all else. You don’t even know why. You don’t know why little things bother you now. When they say something they deon’t like, you want desperately to change that. And when they say something they like about you…it means the world and more.”

The spybot let out a sigh. His head fell forward, sagging until his chin hit his chest. He stared at his lap, looking depressed.

“That’s about what I thought it was,” the engiebot said in agreement.

The spybot’s head jerked, looking up to him, “You…what?”

“Sure, I can feel love,” the engiebot nodded, “I feel lots of things. Sadness. Anger. Frustration. Joy. Hell, I like you guys. That’s an emotion.”

“It’s not the same as love,” the spybot protested.

“No, but…well, it ain’t that I’m unable to feel love,” the engiebot explained, “It’s that I simply don’t right now…for anybody in particular.”

The spybot sighed again, “Great. That’s just great.”

“It’s not an inability to feel love,” the engiebot protested.

“You’re only saying that now,” the spybot said, irritably.

“What? Why would I only be saying that? I mean it,” the engiebot argued.

“You’re only saying it to make me feel better,” the spybot let out another sigh.

“Well, in your perception of love, you left out a lot of things,” the engiebot argued. The spybot gave him a curious look as he started explaining. “Your heart or regulator in the case of bot perception, starts racing faster like you’re running a marathon. Coolant is emitted for the sake of surface heat, which you don’t even know where it is coming from or why. It becomes difficult to think, and thus hard to create patterns of speech that don’t sound absolutely stupid. You lose yourself in them.”

The spybot started chuckling, “That sounds an awful lot like love.”

“Yea,” the engiebot nodded, “If you like me so much. Then…I dunno. Maybe. I’m not against it. I just don’t feel like I know you the way you think you know me.”

“How well do you think I know you?” the spybot asked.

“Well-” he did not get to answer, as the double doors banged open. Engiebot spun around to see the Spy.

“There you are!” the Spy looked absolutely enraged.

“Ah hell,” the engiebot grabbed his wrench.

The Spy started forward, but was immediately hit by something. It went off with a loud bang and moved too fast for the engiebot to see it. He took a few moments, watching the body fall, to register what had just happened. The Spy laid dead on the floor, with a bullet hole in his head.

He turned to see the Spybot, who held a revolver in hand. The engiebot stared at the smoking gun, but he spybot was staring at the dead body. He seemed completely preoccupied with it.

“Tell me…those robots we usually fight…are those…real people?” the spybot asked.

“No,” the engiebot shook his head, “This is the first…human…to have come here. Hadn’t seen a real person since we were removed from construction to testing.”

“Construction to testing?” the spybot inquired.

“Probably your programming or something doesn’t let you remember,” the engiebot shrugged, “I remember being in construction. I remember…I remember my maker’s face. A real Engineer he was. I remember seeing you boys for the first time there, before we were relocated to the base. You all just sort of…woke up and went about life like you had always done things that way. Meanwhile I was just…kind of…fumbling.”

“How long?” the spybot asked, hardly missing a beat.

“Pardon me?” the engiebot asked, taken aback.

“How long since we were in construction?” the spybot pressed, turning his attention fully to the engiebot.

He made a noise like he was clearing his throat, “Well, I’d say about…seven months? Maybe more. I didn’t do very well at keeping track.”

“With this kind of programming though?” the spybot asked, with a small gesture of the hand.

“Oh, that? That was from a software update that auto uploaded into us about four months ago,” he explained.

The spybot huffed, then laid down. He placed his hands over his chestplate. He turned his head, looking back to the engiebot.

“When I do wake up…I’ll remember this?” the spybot asked.

“I’m pretty sure,” the engiebot nodded.

“And you’ll look like…you…like human you again?” the spybot asked, hesitantly.

“Yea, I’m pretty sure that’s how it’ll work,” he walked over to the bed that the medicbot was laid on. He might as well get to work on assessing the damage. They would need him around sooner or later.

“Do me a favor,” the spybot requested.

“What is it?” the engiebot turned to look at him.

“Tell me…” the spybot hesitated uncertainly, “Tell me…when they’re bots. When they’re humans…tell me.”

He nodded, “I’ll tell ya.”

The spybot nodded and laid his head back. His eyes shut off, as his systems went into sleep mode. With the spybot off to slumber for a while, the engiebot was freed up to fix the medicbot.

He was just about to pull the face plate off so he could get a closer look, when the doors banged open. He turned to face the intruders with surprise. It was a Scout, a Spy and none other than his maker. He stared at the man’s face, unable to look away.

“Here they are,” the Spy commented, gesturing to the engiebot.

“How did you…” he looked down at the body, which was starting to disappear, “Deadringer?”

“Yup, he’s got a deadringer,” the Engineer pulled up on his tool belt, shifting it under rolls of fat.

“Look, he…it’s gone?” the Spy blinked at him, bewildered.

“Seems this one’s been making modifications on himself,” the Engineer grinned broadly.

“Oh look, the spybot’s down,” the Scout pointed with his bat.

“No wait!” the engiebot held his hands up defensively.

“I’ve been watching you,” the Engineer stepped towards him, with a very dangerous swagger to his step.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you removing the screws? Their processors can’t handle it,” he gestured to the spybot, “They don’t have a chance!”

“They’re meant to be shut down,” the Engineer replied, “Gotta see the results of the study.”

The engiebot stood there, feeling quite stunned. Removing the screws was not about showing them that they were bots. It was about having them shut down. Disregarding the fact that the bots had mental breakdowns over it, ranging from the spybot’s subtle behavior to the heavybot’s outrage and rampaging that destroyed the medicbot, it was the most efficient way to shut down their systems manually, without harming their processors and memory chips.

“You can’t do this,” the engiebot protested.

“Engineer,” the Spy interrupted, “Are you going to explain what exactly this is?”

“This one…” the Engineer pointed to the engiebot as he turned to the Spy, “This is prototype E447. His processor was not properly installed and he started up in construction, before transport. Boss didn’t give us much time to work, and I was a bit curious myself, so instead of fixing it, I let it onto the testing grounds. It’s been completely self-aware this entire time.”

“So you ruined the study,” the Spy gave him an irritated look.

“On the contrary,” the Engineer chuckled, “He’s the one regarded as insane. They still think they’re human.” He paused, turning to look back at the engiebot. “His processor even works well. If you put the screw back in it pushes the parts back into place. Don’t it?”

The engiebot could not help but nod. He was so taken with this situation. It blew him away to think that he was finally meeting with his maker, but also defending the other bots.

“It hasn’t harmed the tests at all,” the Engineer explained.

“But the prototype- the _engiebot_ prototype was supposed to simulate the same,” the Spy argued.

“Oh my God! Can we just go already?” the Scout threw his head back and growled in exasperation.

“You can’t study them,” the engiebot finally spoke up. All heads turned to him in unison. “I mean, I’m not going to let you kill them!”

“I ain’t killing them,” the Engineer argued.

“You ain’t?” the engiebot was surprised and relieved at the same time.

“Nah,” the Engineer assured him, “Just gonna open them up, check the processors, analyze the data collected by the memory chips. Empty the chips and refurbish the processors to be installed into new bodies.”

He took a moment to process this carefully. He was not sure whether he simply meant giving them new bodies, or entirely repurposing their functions. The memory chip wipe was definitely something he was against though.

“I can’t let you destroy our memories,” engiebot argued, tightening his hands into fists.

“You don’t remember anything,” the Engineer chuckled, “Would make sense…given it was just your processor.”

“What was just my processor?” he demanded firmly.

“Every few months,” the Engineer went on, “We switch your bodies out. While you’re here playing house, I’m working my ass off to make newer and better bots. I ain’t got time to sit around on my ass like the last guy. We’re working on these new things every few months, when before they had a few years to work.”

“My processor…” he paused to think about it, “I was a different bot?”

“Think you were just the engiebot before,” the Enginer scratched his beard.

“Engineer, can we get to the point of shutting them down?” the Scout interrupted, “Can we just go?”

“Got a new puzzle for ya,” the Engineer argued.

The Spy groaned, “No puzzles. Please.”

“How do you shut down something that won’t shut down, if you cannot harm it’s cores but you would have to do so in order to shut it down?” the Engineer asked.

“I don’t know!” the Scout moaned, “You’re the Engineer here! You’re the expert on this!”

“Seems we got ourselves a standoff,” the Engineer commented.

“We shouldn’t have a standoff,” the engiebot argued firmly. He was not about to back down and let them get their hands on his pals.

Strangely enough, bots or no, he had come to the conclusion that they were his friends. He had never thought about this before. Contrarily, if something were to happen to them, he would actually feel quite bad. It was part of the reason why he wanted so badly to get to fixing the medicbot. It was not just a desire for the team to stay strong, it was a friend in need of his expertise.

“Look here,” the Engineer grimaced, “I put you together! I can sure as hell take you apart!”

“You and what army?” the Engineer tried to puff his chest up in an intimidating way.

Suddenly, the doors opened, admitting a human Heavy, a human Demoman, a human Soldier and a (presumably human) Pyro. They just seemed to show up on cue, as if they were waiting for that moment. He could already see that he was outnumbered by too far now.

“How about this one?” the spy commented, almost gleefully.

“I won’t let you!” the engiebot took a step back in spite of himself.

“You can’t do nothing about it,” the Engineer took a step towards him.

“I’ll leave you with nothing!” the engiebot responded, backing up quickly towards the spybot’s bed. There was a revolver there that he could use.

“What are _you_ gonna do about it?” the Engineer quipped.

“You don’t wanna lose your precious information,” the engiebot grabbed the gun.

“You don’t have the guts to kill your own! Wasting them? Even messed up, you have developed human-like attachments to them!” the Engineer called his bluff.

“You’re right,” he looked at the revolver in his hand, “I can’t shoot him.” He turned it on himself, pressing the barrel to the hole where the screw should be. “One shot at this trajectory will destroy all of the data collected over these past few months.”

“Put that gun down!” the Engineer ordered.

He cocked the gun, “Or what? You’ll take me apart? Use me again? I’ll just end it here. You’ll have nothing but spare parts.”

The Engineer’s hands tightened into white knuckled fists. He looked very mad, with his face turning red with a building rage. He might as well have morphed into a mad bull with a need to kill the bot. His grip was tight around the wrench.

“Listen here, you’re doing nobody any good by aiming that gun,” the Engineer growled, “You put that down!”

“No!” he felt like he was shaking as he put his finger on the trigger. He might not be alive like a human, but there were consequences to shooting himself in the head. These consequences would be irreversible.

“No!” the spybot suddenly called out.

The engiebot flinched and looked over at him. He swung his legs off of the bed and stood up. His hand went instinctively for where his revolver would have been, before he realized that the engiebot had it. He looked very scared.

“Put. That. Gun. Down,” the Engineer pointed at the engiebot.

“No!” the engiebot barked.

“Just shoot little robot,” the Heavy said, glancing over at some of the other mercenaries.

“No, he’ll shoot the memory core,” the Engineer clenched his fists and his teeth.

“What do we do then?” the Sniper asked.

“You lot take care of the-” the sound of a cloak going up sent every man’s hackles rising.

Engiebot looked in spite of himself. The spybot had cloaked, disappearing into nothing. He turned back, pushing the gun to his head and tightening his grip on it.

“Where’d he go?” the human mercenaries started panicking.

“Now hold on! Nobody move!” the Engineer ordered.

It was too late as everybody had moved about to start spychecking. It was like the spybot knew they would come looking for him instinctively.

About to call out for him, the engiebot froze when the Engineer screamed in pain. He lurched, falling forward with a knife in his back. The spybot looked to him, as if searching for approval for a moment. For that moment, the engiebot forgot all about the gun in his hand.

“Get going!” he shouted at him.

“Engie!” the Scout cried out as the entire mercenary team converged upon the spybot. The spybot had no plans to stick around though, turning and fleeing the scene.

This left he engiebot forgotten almost entirely. He stood there, revolver in his hand, as he finally came to grips with what had just happened. He looked at the body, pausing for a few breaths.

He lowered the gun and walked over, crouching to inspect the corpse as red pooled around it. The man was no more, that was for certain. Still, he could not help feeling an anxious sense of insecurity about approaching this body. It was like a boogeyman that might pop up and grab him at any moment. Just for that reason, he held the revolver at the ready.

He was not really sure what he was looking for. An ID maybe? Some piece of evidence that there was something more to the face. The man was dead, sure, but not forgotten, not to him. Maybe he could take something to remember him by. Even if the man wanted him dead, there was something odd about how he was in his early memories.

His fingers came out with a wallet. It was thin, with little more than a few paper bills. They were like scrap paper to him, not knowing what it was for or where it was from. Sure, it seemed like money of some sort, but not any kind that he had ever seen before. It was more like play money.

He tucked the wallet away in his pocket and searched further. There had to be something he could use. There had to be something that could help him with what was going on. He had to be able to save his team.

Having that thought was when he came across the key. It was just a card and he was going to discard it with the attached lanyard at first. Then he looked at it more closely. It had a scan strip, with some codes on one side. On the other side was the Engineer’s picture and name. The rest was just a bunch of digits and information regarding the use of the card.

It was a key to open the doors to the surrounding building. With this key he could go anywhere. It was likely that the other mercenaries had some keys, but not the same as this key. This key could take him anywhere in the building. He could do anything he wanted here.

He looked at the bed where he had left the scoutbot and the medicbot. Scoutbot might wake up soon, and he hoped he did. If he recovered like the spybot had, then things would be fine.

“I’ll be back,” he assured them. Of course they would not know, but he would make this promise to himself.

He tucked the key into his pocket as he hurried from the infirmary. He had meant to stay there and fix the medicbot, but there was something more pressing on his mind.

Fighting back, doing anything against those humans would be nothing. All of it would mean nothing if they remained there. They had to do something about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully I'll be done with chapter 4 soon. I just completely changed the ending to this story.


	4. The Final Act

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The engiebot must make a very important decision. His foolish actions have led to this, but now he must choose between the consequences and escape.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final chapter! For real this time!

The engiebot came to a halt before a big door. He had been by here to inspect this door before, mostly out of curiosity. There was no doubt in his mind that it was an entrance to the facility. The doubt and child-like curiosity was long gone with the hardened fact that everything about this place threatened him and his comrades.

Even if he could hardly call them comrades, he had them on his mind when he entered. Stepping into the dimly lit hall, he kept in mind that without him the medicbot would be gone forever. The humans would eventually catch the scoutbot and spybot. They would get to every other bot, shut them down and take them apart to inspect them like lifeless things that cannot think for themselves.

His hand went into his pocket to feel that key card that helped him in. The man’s picture reminded him of the moment that he had felt human. No amount of living as the others had would change the fact that he knew the difference between himself and his maker.

He might have been intended to be like his maker, but he was nothing like him. He thought for himself. He changed himself. He made himself who he was: something different. In the end, they gave up the power over the bots when they gave them an artificial intelligence with the capacity to think for themselves and be their own people.

He followed the emergency lights that kept the facility from being a dark and endless nightmare. The hallways remained narrow but tall, making him feel short but also compacted. His mouth would have felt dry, but he knew it was just a reaction in his programming to make him feel the sensation a human would.

“Color me tickled,” the familiar Texan accent approached from the other end.

He was not prepared to face off with the man so soon. In fact, he had forgotten that the man probably had a respawn set up. He was hoping that everybody was still out there fighting bots, distracted by his teammates.

He could not run away though. He had to face what was coming. There was no left or right between them, and the way back was just fleeing from this facility.

“You’ve become one sore screw in my foot,” the Engineer pulled out a pistol and loaded it.

The engiebot took a breath and charged forward. He held his breath as he moved, going right for the man with the gun. Two shots fired and struck him. They hurt, but the moment his metal body slammed into the other man, he knew that he had beaten him. Metal beat organic material, clearly. And the man could not stop him from running.

He was not particularly fast, but having bludgeoned right through the human, he could just keep going unhindered. He heard him growling behind him, as he clambered to his feet. It was just another reason to not only keep going, but to hurry along. He picked up his feet, practically counting the steps as he distanced himself from the man he had angered.

He looked around quickly until he found a door. It had a very clear red label glowing over it that said “control module.” If that was not a clear location for gaining access to control, then he did not know what was.

He used his key card to get inside, careful to make sure it was closed behind him. He found that the room had three sets of control panels. Each of them looked nearly the exact same. He approached one, hoping it might have the answers he needed. As he plopped down in the chair, he scanned the controls and their labels.

Each label seemed to be abbreviated without explanation. He was not even sure where the start button was. He pressed a key and the thing hummed to life. Relieved, he watched and waited as it began to show him the camera options.

Seeing that this was a camera monitoring module, he decided to try another one. Maybe it had a different set of controls than the other ones. He pressed the same exact key as he had before and it came to life. This one was different though, showing information about the nine bots that were in the facility. The medicbot read as being destroyed, with a small message that indicated that some elements may be recoverable. The scoutbot, demobot, pyrobot and spybot were all alive and moving around. The rest indicated that they had been shut down and were awaiting manual recovery.

Engiebot’s information was separately different. His curiosity got to him and he clicked on it. He should have known that it was nothing unique that he did not know about. It simply indicated that there was an error in his processor. Some commented details were attached, indicating how the installation procedure had failed and the reassembly of the bot had resulted in a permanence in its system.

So he was forever doomed to not know what it was like to be human. Sure, there was that time he spent looking at himself and seeing skin instead of metal. That was a pretty neat feeling. This was not about that, this was about his perception of the world, and how he would always know himself as being a bot.

Somehow reading this made him feel even worse when he previously had no feelings about it. He knew he was different. He knew that his system was not functioning on the same level as others’ systems. Still, reading this and having it pushed into his face made him feel like a failure.

He shook himself and got out of the chair. He did not have time to worry about his feelings. He had a lot at stake and he did not have all of the time in the world to secure whatever he could get out of this room.

He was about to sit at the third module when loud banging came at the door. “You can’t hide from me!” the Engineer shouted angrily through the door, “I know _wherever_ you are! I know wherever you go!”

The engiebot shook his head. That was okay if the man could track him. He just had to stay ahead of him. At this point, to the best of his knowledge, the Engineer had no way into this room without his keycard. With that in mind, he chuckled in amusement and turned on the third module.

For whatever reason, be it fate or luck, there was a simple selection on the screen. It was like somebody had come in here prior to him to set something up. It was just asking him to click yes or no on whether to print the “details of facility.”

He chuckled some more, amused that this had gone along so easily. He clicked yes and listened to the printer shove out page after page of color ink on paper, each one attached flimsily to the next page. He walked over to watch as the paper folded over each other, printing the images he had seen on the screens, from saved camera shots to details about the bots themselves.

It was taking an awful long time though, so he got a little bored. He returned to the modules and decided to look at the bot module again. Moving out of the screen about himself, he clicked around to see what else was on the module. To his surprise, he clicked on something that revealed duplicates of themselves. The next lineup of bots was not the only set of bots that had been prepared in this facility, as hundreds of bots lay waiting to be activated.

“They’re already there?” he felt surprised and quite disappointed. He had had the idea that the maker had taken his time with each bot, to fashion not only their personality but to make them personally different. “Seems like the time to bring them to life,” he clicked on a button and suddenly the screen became filled with activation sequences.

Each message asked him if he was certain about activating the bots, making clear note that the refurbishing and relocation processes had yet to be completed prior. He quickly began clicking on each one. He was clicking so much and so fast that it began to hurt his finger. He did not stop though, refusing to let go of the hope that he might get help in the form of other bots.

Smirking to himself, he returned to watching the printer. It was making a giant stack of pages, and it was taking a long time. All he could do was wait and hope that what he found in those would be helpful. He certainly had nothing else to go on.

A sudden scream from outside alarmed him. He turned his head to look at the door. He waited, listening in silence as the printer screeched each page out of its maw.

An appendage of metal knocked on the door, “Hello in there?” It was a sniperbot.

The engiebot approached the door with caution, surprised that the bots had responded so quickly to being alive. It seemed like perhaps they had woken up looking for blood. Having stumbled across the Engineer so quickly could not have been a coincidence, after all.

“Yea?” he called back, hesitantly.

“It’s another bot!” the sniperbot said to another.

“That’s a control room,” another sniperbot responded.

“If he is messing around in there, then we should kill him,” a spybot replied.

“No no!” he insisted, “Listen. I’m going to open the door. Don’t shoot. I’m just going to open the door. I’m unarmed. I’m just going to show you.”

He listened as they muttered amongst themselves. Of course they would be wary of what sounded like an engiebot. Then again, it was rather curious that they thought he sounded like an engiebot. They should have been hearing him like he was a normal person, since their systems registered the Engineer as being an engiebot himself.

“We’re onto you, robot,” a sniperbot growled.

“Just lemme open the door,” he insisted, nervously, “I’ll show you. I’m not going to cause you any harm. Look before you shoot.”

“Alright, just keep your hands up and come out slowly,” the spybot replied.

He gulped a deep breath and pressed a finger to the button that opened the door from the inside. Outside of the door were three snipers with rifles, a spybot with a revolver, a soldierbot with a rocket launcher and a pyrobot with a flame thrower. All of them were pointing their weapons at the door, waiting for the engiebot to reveal himself.

“He is a Spy!” the spybot spat.

“Spy!” the sniperbots shouted in unison.

“No no,” he stepped towards them, hands up in the air. He bumped into the spybot who was closest, knowing that would tell them he was indeed like them. He could not sit them down and explain what they really were though, no he had to simply play along as he always did.

“Okay, so you’re not a Spy,” the spybot lowered his revolver.

One by one, they each lowered their weapons. More bots came from down the hallway, curious as to what was going on. They also seemed to be looking for a room, an intelligence room. The chatter became unbearably loud.

“Listen,” he paused, turning to the spybot, “I gotta finish printing in here. When I’m finished, we’re getting out of here.”

“I’m assuming you have been authorized to do so?” the spybot gestured to the engiebot.

“Indeed I have,” he lied.

He stepped inside and closed the door, leaving them all outside. They probably had not expected that, but it was for the best. He needed to think in quiet. As long as there was the imminent threat of the humans coming back with respawn, there was the threat of all of the bots being destroyed.

He grabbed the stack that had already printed, breaking it off of the next one that was already coming out, and sat down at the table in the center. He began thumbing through the pages. He scanned over pictures, searching faces and looking for clues.

There was data about the bots and their updates. He most enjoyed reading the one that explained the updates that had been made in the past, and what updates would be applied to the next _generation_ of bots. His own generation had been updated with the capacity to acknowledge bot voices as human voices and human voices as bot voices, when the speaker is not seen.

His favorite about his own _generation_ was that a higher intelligence quotient had been applied. As there seemed to be no reason to go higher, there were no plans to up that intelligence quotient, making the engiebot one of the smartest bots. He could not help feeling rather proud of that.

As he was thumbing through these update notes though, something became rather apparent. The bots he had just activated had yet to receive any updates after the year of 1991. These bots were rudimentary, with lower intelligence quotient, less memory processing to create personality, and were very close to the original beta prototype: the originals.

He did not need to read up on the originals to recognize those ones. They were the bots sent at them for training. Thoughtless and ruthless, their programming told them to kill, and they could not think outside of that. Aside from the preformed personality modules and audio processors that allowed bots like himself to speak with his own words instead of repeating after somebody else, these recently activated bots were only different from the originals in that they had free will to avoid self-harm at the cost of the goal.

Free will was the biggest thing in the early production of bots. It was what made it possible for them to do things without being constantly monitored and instructed. The monitoring was to make sure they did not go too far off of the course of what their goal actually was.

Now, looking at those files, he saw the difference between himself and those bots. He had spent about six months living with the same eight bots, getting to know them like humans. Sure, he did not know himself as a human, but he was more human than they were. He had learned to live cooperatively among others.

Not to mention the updates. With a raised intelligence quotient and a raised sense of awareness, he could form his own personality. He was definitely different from his maker, the man he was obviously intended to be like. If that was true, then he could not only make decisions for himself, but decide on his own morals.

The further he read into the papers, the more terrified he felt. The horror made him feel ice cold, as he read over the notes regarding why the facility must be kept so tightly under lock and key. It detailed the reasons for which the bots must be so closely monitored and kept secret from the public.

If one bot got out, they would recognize every human as a bot. They would be a constant killing machine, resulting in death after death until it was finally stopped. By then, what would the company have? They would be shut down from production and the bots would all suffer likewise.

He sat back in his chair, staring at the notes. He could not believe he had not thought of this sooner. If he had known that, he would not have unleashed the entire arsenal of bots that had not been turned on. Sure they were stuck on the facility now, but even with a lower IQ, a bot could probably still figure out their way through this place and get out. All it took was one to open the doors, and the army could kill hundreds, maybe thousands, before the military could stop them.

There had to be a way to stop them. He had to be able to convince them of the truth or something. There had to be a way to reverse all of this. To his dismay, looking at the second module, he found that the bots could not be shut down remotely. It was no wonder they sent a Spy in to shut each of them down.

He would have to do something about this himself. So, he took a deep breath and strode to the door. He stepped through the entrance and turned to address those who were still lingering nearby. They seemed lost, so he figured he should get their attention.

“Listen, I need to tell ya’ll something. You might wanna sit down for this,” he informed them.

“Alright,” a sniperbot leaned against the wall, “Let’s hear it.”

They all turned to him, but none of them were listening to the sitting down part. That was fine. They probably did not need to sit down anyways. They would probably not faint after all.

“This is going to sound rather unorthodox,” he explained slowly, “But you’re not human. You’re all bots.”

The round of laughter was too loud. In spite of his efforts, the more he tried to explain, the louder he laughed. The laughter attracted more listeners who joined in. The apparent ‘joke’ got passed along with new iterations, resulting in a raucous crowd in the hallway.

He had failed. Just as he had with trying to convince his teammates when they were first activated, he had failed to convince these bots that they were not men. Why did he even think that he could have convinced them though? It had failed before, of course it would fail again.

He hurried along the hallway. Standing around was not going to do anything. It was probably not best to wander though, as he heard gunshots followed by robotic laughter down another hallway.

He moved carefully in that direction, until he saw the bots gathered in the glow of a light. Getting a closer look, he saw that they were all looking through the glowing windows of a respawn room. Inside it was empty for the moment. Then, the Scout respawned and the whole lot of bots started sending explosives at him. The Scout yelped and screamed, leaping and running to try and escape, but was ultimately killed by a rocket.

This was not right. This was not okay. He was not okay with this. Not wanting to hurl up anything he had consumed lately, he hurried off. He had to find some way to shutting them all down.

He was surprised by a bump though. He had to do a double take, not believing his eyes at first. Then he realized that he had just run into a Spy. Somebody else had seen it, calling out for Spy.

Realizing that they would just torture the Spy the way they were torturing the Scout, he acted quickly. “Nah, no Spies!”

“You’re a Spy!” a demobot gave him a rough tap.

“Nah, you’re just seeing things,” he insisted.

He backed away from them. He could feel the heat of a body behind him. He turned, pretending that he did not know there was a human Spy right there.

He lowered his voice to a hushed whisper, “Come with me to the control room. They won’t be in there.”

He did not hear a response, if there even was any response. He turned and headed down another hall, hoping that the Spy would follow, while also hoping that he did not attempt anything. He was sure the Spy wanted revenge for what was happening to his team.

At first, he hugged close to the door, making sure none of the other bots would slip into the room. He opened the door, then paused to make sure the Spy could get in. He was not sure that he had, but he had to close the door to prevent the other bots from becoming suspicious.

He heard the decloak before he turned. The Spy was holding a revolver, and he looked worse for wear. His eyes had a mean and furious look in them.

“What have you done?!” the Spy yelled angrily.

The engiebot suddenly shied away. He looked down at his feet, shifting awkwardly. He knew what he had done, but he did not want to say it. He knew that the Spy was angry and that he should be. Still, he could not give up on the detail that he and his comrades were different, and they deserved the respect and freedom of not being shut down.

“You’ve got every right to be angry,” he said, in as calm a voice as he could muster.

“I’m livid!” the Spy roared.

The engiebot took a breath, “And my team and I were just as mad when you came in. Now we have a new problem.”

“The only problem is that I haven’t removed you yet,” the Spy raised his revolver, ready to aim at the engiebot’s head.

“Wait! You have a massive problem with bots roaming everywhere. These bots are programmed to think that you are a bot. They will never recognize you as human. If you step foot out of this room, they will shoot you on sight,” he stopped him, “And then you’ll just be target practice in the respawn room.”

The Spy’s Adam’s apple visibly bobbed up and down. He paused, thinking about this thoroughly. Eventually, he finally lowered his weapon.

“And I should trust you, why?” the Spy demanded.

“I have less reason to trust _you_!” the engiebot barked, “But here I am…I’m trying to do the right thing!”

“And what is the right thing?” the Spy asked.

“Shutting down these bots,” he said, looking at the papers he had left on the table. The printer was still screeching away.

“You’ve been busy,” the Spy looked around.

“Yes, well I’ve made two revelations. One, these bots aren’t to leave this place, else they’ll slaughter hundreds,” the engiebot went on.

“That much is obvious,” the Spy said haughtily, “Why do you think this place was built to prevent escape?”

The engiebot tried to ignore his pretentious attitude, “And two, the bots that you have been trying to shut down have morals. Unlike those bots out there, my team wouldn’t be spawn camping you like that. They have standards and morals.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” the Spy asked, with a snarl.

“Because I know them,” he said, “Believe it or not, like you see your teammates as people, I see my teammates as people too. We may not conveniently be human, but we’re still people. Most of them don’t even realize that they were built out of bolts and wires. They just know they’re people. And if they knew what was going on, they wouldn’t stand for it. That’s what sets us apart from these bots here.”

“And what’s so different about them?” the Spy asked.

“They’ve got a rudimentary understanding of being human at best,” he explained, “But I’ve lived for maybe six months. I haven’t gotten to see much of the world, no. But I do know what it means to live. I won’t let anybody take that from my friends either.”

“So you’re a moral bot who wants to destroy all of the immoral bots?” the Spy raised an eyebrow at him.

“Precisely,” the engiebot replied.

“Fine,” the Spy gave him a curt nod, “There is one failsafe in this facility.”

“A failsafe?” he was surprised that he had yet to read anything like that in the documents yet.

“There are two problems with it,” the Spy informed him.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“One is that it deletes all of the data available while shutting down the bots,” the Spy explained.

“Alright, I’m with you,” the engiebot nodded.

“The second is that only the Engineer has the code for it,” the Spy explained.

“Is that so?” he paused, thinking about this for a minute.

“I don’t know how you’ll get it from him though,” the Spy replied, “Even I could not get the code from him.”

“So he has a failsafe that only he can use, but he’ll refuse to use it?” the engiebot frowned.

“The code is a series of digits that could be typed into one of these modules,” the Spy gestured to the monitors showing the information engiebot had been looking at before. They just sat there, working pointlessly. “I don’t even know what window one would open to get to that failsafe,” the Spy explained, “He left us completely out of the failsafe, so that we could not destroy his work.”

“But it left you vulnerable,” the engiebot walked towards the modules. It did not matter whose side they were on, it was unfair of the Engineer to not think of his team’s safety. He would never put his team at risk for his own work.

“Only somebody with equal intellect could figure it out,” the Spy announced.

“Is that a challenge?” the engiebot asked, both curious and interested in trying.

Maybe he could crack it. Maybe he could manage to put all of this to rest. If there was any bot who could do it, then it had to be him. After all, as a bot without the alternate reality system, he had nothing standing between his conscious mind and his regular programs that allowed him to quickly calculate things.

“Alright,” he walked over to module two, “If a failsafe for the bots would be anywhere, it would be on this module.”

The Spy approached, setting a hand on the back of the chair. He peered over his shoulder curiously, watching the screen as he clicked around in search of the failsafe. The man did not know what he was looking for, but an extra pair of eyes, even human ones, would help the engiebot find the failsafe.

“What might it look like?” the Spy asked.

“I dunno,” the engiebot shrugged, “Why are you asking me? I wouldn’t know this.”

“You’re the closest programming to the Engineer’s own mind,” the Spy informed him, still studying the screen before him, “The closest to date. Your intellect probably reaches his own, with an insurmountable amount of personality data added in.”

“I’m defective though,” he stated, keeping his eyes on the screen, just as the Spy was doing, “I’m a failure. My personality is affected by not having the reality that the others do. In a way, I’m just a failure to his program. In a way, I am a success to making a bot who has personality and life.”

“What makes you so sure of that?” the Spy asked, “You have high intellect, as it is in your programming, but I don’t think you would be programmed with much beyond the personality. All things considered, I would trust you least of anyone.”

The engiebot paused to look up at the Spy. When he said nothing, the Spy sighed and rolled his eyes. He pulled a disguise kit from his jacket and pulled out a cigarette to light up. He paused as he took the first deep drag, lighting up the end with rosy embers.

“Of any man on my team, the Engineer is the most aggressive,” the Spy informed him, “Perhaps a greater threat than any, and more a liar than I am.”

The engiebot chuckled at that. He shook his head and resumed searching for the failsafe. It had to be somewhere on this particular module. It focused on the bots, after all.

“What’s so funny?” the Spy asked.

“You basically admitted to being a liar,” the engiebot snickered.

“Yes well, it comes with my occupation,” the Spy defended himself.

“Less talk and more focus on finding that failsafe,” the engiebot insisted, “I might set you up on the third module to look around.

The Spy took a step away, puffing on his cigarette. He must have been nervous. Maybe he was trying to hide how scared he was. Maybe he had been scared this entire time and the engiebot simply had not noticed. It was easy to forget the fragility of being human.

“I know I’m not human,” the engiebot went on, “But, I’d like to think I’m a person. I might have been _intended_ to be some way…but that’s not how things worked out. I might have been intended to do things his way, but that’s not how things worked out. I am seriously contemplating how human he is if he did not think to put a _failsafe_ in the hands of his teammates, in case of such an incident.”

“And you? You released the bots killing us,” the Spy protested.

“An oversight I deeply regret,” engiebot insisted with a sigh, “I never meant for them to cause actual harm, I just wanted help. I had nobody here to help me.”

“Help you do what?” the Spy asked.

He shrugged, “Escape a man who wants to kill me? Take me apart and study my mind? Clearly you underestimate how terrifying that idea is.”

There was silence between them, with just the clicking of the mouse. They stared for the longest time at the screen, searching for that forbidden failsafe. It had to be a button or a piece of the screen they were not seeing. It took a random click for a message to pop up.

“Failsafe Ready,” it said, “Override and shut down all systems?”

The engiebot could have hooted with excitement at having found the failsafe. They were that much closer to shutting down the bots and preventing mass murder and havoc. It would just take some digits, apparently a nine digit code.

“Nine digits,” the Spy said thoughtfully.

Suddenly gunshots outside did not initially bother them. The bots outside had been noisy all along, after all. Rather, it was when the door suddenly opened that they were both startled into turning to look at the newcomer.

The Engineer was panting heavily, using one hand to lean on the wall and the other to hold his shotgun. He looked like he was ready to collapse, with a film of glistening sweat on his brow. He must have been racing through the halls, trying to escape the bots to this room.

“Engineer!” the Spy barked.

The engiebot felt a sensation like his heart dropping. If the Spy had help now, then he was doomed. They would enter the failsafe and kill him. He did not get up from his seat though, ready to make himself useful at the module.

“Spy! What the hell are you doing?!” the Engineer spat.

“Doing what I should have done a long time ago,” the Spy said, with irritation on his breath.

“What?” the Engineer asked, not catching on to what was going on at first, “Is that…you’ve opened the failsafe!”

“Yes,” the Spy replied, “And we’re going to shut down all of your little toys.”

The Engineer raised his shotgun at the Spy, who raised his revolver to the Engineer. Both gritted their teeth at each other, ready to kill the other. Neither of them even took the moment to acknowledge the engiebot for the time being.

“You know _I’m_ the better shot,” the Spy said, coyly.

“And my shotgun has a scatter range wider than your little handgun,” the Engineer cocked his weapon, “So choose wisely.”

“We have to shut these bots down!” the engiebot voiced his opinion of siding with the Spy. Their heads suddenly turned to look at him in unison. “I know I started them up, but I regret that. It was an oversight. They’ll kill anybody they come across if they get out!” the engiebot explained hastily.

“Nothing I don’t know,” the Engineer said, “That’s why I know they ain’t getting out. The place is too big for them to escape.”

“Takes only one,” the engiebot insisted.

“Yes, and if you let one out, the rest will follow!” the Spy added, “An army to slaughter thousands!”

“Risks have to be taken,” the Engineer insisted.

“Not this risk,” the engiebot insisted, turning to the module. He had no idea what the code actually was, but he had a few simple ideas to try typing in.

Suddenly, the Engineer grinned, “You know what that failsafe will do, right?”

The engiebot looked at him slightly, keeping the failsafe within his vision so he could type when he was ready. In the back of his mind, he was calculating possibilities. It was improbable for any number to be complicated enough to not be easily solved, but if it were a mathematical procedure, then he had no idea which one to do for it.

When he received no response, the Engineer went on, “When you activate that failsafe, it doesn’t just shut those bots down out there. Nope. It shuts down every bot in this facility. The resulting shock will ruin hardwire and likely fry everything in your AI. It’ll render you helpless and dead. That’s worse than what I was going to do to you.”

The engiebot became struck with panic, turning to look at them, “No…no! You can’t do this!”

“He didn’t tell you, did he?” the Engineer chuckled, gesturing to the Spy with his gun.

“I did what I had to!” the Spy barked.

“You did admit to being a liar, openly,” the engiebot admitted, feeling foolish. He had trusted the Spy so openly. It was foolish of him to have thought they could be on the same side.

“Put the failsafe in! You have to!” the Spy barked at the engiebot.

“I can’t,” the engiebot shook his head, “It’ll shut down my team. My friends.”

“Each of them nicely shut down,” the Engineer smirked smugly, “All of them ready for manual relocation. Except for the medicbot, he looked a mite too far gone.”

“You imbeciles!” the Spy cried out in frustration.

The engiebot looked at the failsafe screen. Behind it, he could see the readings for his friends. They were all shut down and ready to be relocated and studied. If he managed to save them, then what? The majority of them were like this bots in a way. They did not know that they were not human. They would not believe him like the spybot had, given the spybot had had some sort of emotional attachment to him.

As much as it pained him, the lives of thousands of innocent people lay beyond this building, this wall that prevented them from escape. If anything were to come from this, it would be that he learned not to make hasty risks in the name of self-preservation.

He took a breath as he turned the chair back to the failsafe. The screen was ready for him to input the code, all he had to do was to type numbers. It seemed rather stupid, as he typed in 123456789. That was a foolish but still logically possible set of numbers for a code.

“What the hell are you doing?!” the Engineer exclaimed loudly.

The engiebot sighed, “Ending the misery. I don’t like it, but it’s the right thing to-”

The pain that hit him caused him to fall out of the chair. His circuits were hot and everything felt like it was being torn out of his body. He shut off his vision and tried to get a grip on himself, as limbs started twitching and his mind went deep under the frying heat.

“…do,” he managed to whisper as he felt the sweet embrace of what felt like sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In memory of engiebot.
> 
> More robot stories (and related series): http://madoushi-ryuu.wixsite.com/manncoproductions/we-are-alive


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